Sally Hemings

Sarah "Sally" Hemings (1773-1835) was an American quadroon slave owned by Thomas Jefferson who bore him six illegitimate children as the result of a love affair with the widower Jefferson.

Biography
Sarah Hemings was born in Charles City County, Virginia in 1773 to a white slave master and a biracial slave mother; she was an enslaved quadroon. She was owned by the father of Martha Jefferson, the wife of Thomas Jefferson, and she came to Monticello as an infant on the death of Martha's father. In 1787, at the age of 14, she accompanied Jefferson's daughter Polly to visit Thomas in France, where she started a sexual relationship with Jefferson. The two began a relationship despite their differing social statuses, and they never married. Hemings had six children with Jefferson, and all of their children were freed when they came of age. She died in Charlottesville, Virginia in 1835 at the age of 62.